This I Believe

The lack of education, quite possibly, could be the most detrimental aspect in our society’s downfalls. This, I believe.

Did you know we have over two million people in federal and state prisons in the United States? One third of these people have less than a 9th grade reading level. Two thirds of the prison population is less literate than the rest of the adults in America. Over half of them never completed their high school diploma. See any correlation here?

Education leads to less crime, healthier and happier people, and more money to put towards helping other and helping ourselves, among other things. Giving more government assistance to the population is not the answer to our problems.

You can put billions of dollars into welfare programs and it’ll do you no good if people can’t learn to help themselves. Education teaches people how to help themselves, and yet, the funding for it keeps getting but.

Education and literacy allow people to learn how to be healthy, how to take care of their bodies, and thus causing less medical care expenses for everyone. They can read and understand medical journals, food labels, and articles to help them stay healthy. With healthier people, we have increased levels of seratonin and a generally happier population.

Education and knowing how to read, especially small print, assists people in making better informed decisions about what they can and can’t afford. This produces less debt and less reason to commit crimes for financial stability, leaving less people in jail.

Education also helps teenagers make better decisions about respecting their bodies, in turn, causing less abortions and unwanted babies. It allows teenagers to choose better friends and effects their decisions of what they do on Saturday nights.

Education and the ability to read provides for better job opportunities, with less need for government assistance. This leads to more financial stability and happier home lives, less drug and alcohol abuse and less divorce. In turn, you have happier children, and that leaves all kinds of possibilities.

Education and literacy together create more educated people; the people who are going to solve our energy crisis, global warming factors, and become our leaders; the people who are going to help other countries become self-reliant; the people who are going to come up with the cures to keep our children, our friends and our siblings from dying too soon; the people who are going to decide who are next president will be.

No, education will not instantly solve all of our problems, but it will produce the people who can solve most of them. This is why I chose to become a teacher. This, I believe.

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.